PNM St Joseph can­di­date Ter­rence Deyals­ingh last night slammed UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s pop­ulist ap­proach to the COVID-19 cri­sis, cater­ing more for pop­u­lar views rather than safe­ty.

Speak­ing at PNM’s Mt Lam­bert meet­ing, Deyals­ingh not­ed, “(She said) Open the bor­ders. Keep rum shops open! Is the sun­shine’. But a great leader doesn’t take you al­ways where you want to go, they take you where you ought to go.”

Deyals­ingh’s com­ment came af­ter it was dis­cov­ered that T&T now has two lo­cal COVID cas­es.

Prais­ing PNM leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s lead­er­ship, he said T&T’s COVID re­sponse taught the coun­try about lead­er­ship.

“T&T didn’t ar­rive where we are by guess be­cause we have a Prime Min­is­ter with vi­sion and we need to con­tin­ue in this vein for the next five years,” he said.

He said Row­ley was hon­est had in­tegri­ty and had emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence.

“That pre­vents peo­ple from hav­ing neg­a­tive emo­tions that in­flu­ence your de­ci­sion-mak­ing. He lis­tened to the sci­ence of the COVID is­sue and he lis­tened to the pub­lic of­fi­cers and took ad­vice - that is emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence.”

“On Au­gust 11 (af­ter the gen­er­al elec­tion), T&T will still have COVID-19 since the world has 15 mil­lion cas­es. Whom do you want lead­ing the COVID re­sponse? I want Kei­th Row­ley!”

He said Row­ley was al­so com­fort­able in his own skin, “whether he is a ‘blank’ man or any oth­er kind of man - he’s com­fort­able with him­self.” —Gail Alexan­der